


Wandless Magic

by Hrb25



Category: Original Work
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Gen, Magical school, Witches
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-09-01
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:02:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25908547
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hrb25/pseuds/Hrb25
Summary: When Jonah is fifteen her magic starts going haywire. Problem is, she didn't even know magic was real until she nearly burned down her church. When the Council catches wind of this, they send her to the Academy where she learns to control her magic, and where they can keep an eye on her and her strange, windless magic.
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a dream I had that I wanted to try to turn into a story. It is the first thing I've ever written and posted like this.

“It makes sense if you don’t think about it too hard,” was the best advice her father had ever given her and Jonah’s approach to life. Some would call the strange and unfortunate happening around her luck – be it good or bad. But Jonah knew more than they and knew that she was about as unlucky as they came. And so she chose to not think too hard about these things.

She had never once lost a game of heads or tails, never been caught sneaking out of Sunday school, not even the time Father John had turned a corner and walked right past her where she was glued to the spot in the middle of the hall. When the purple dress she was forced to wear for her school yearbook came out as the blue one she had really wanted she did not question it. Classmates considered her the highest authority on whether or not a quiz would be given the next day and she had never once been wrong.

There were some things that were a bit harder to ignore, but she was anything if not persistent in her willful ignorance.

If her coffee had a proclivity for adding milk and stirring itself, well surely, she had just forgotten about doing it earlier.

When the tree in her grandparents’ yard bloomed for the first time in fifty years overnight after she had camped out underneath it, that was just due to the particularly fertile summer they were having. She pointedly ignored weatherman talking about the drought on the evening news. 

If the pages occasionally turned themselves when she was reading her brother his bedtime stories, that was to be blamed on the light and the hour, nothing more.

When her granny died and her emotions got the better of her and she screamed and screamed and screamed in her front yard, the lightning that struck the barn next door was, of course, just heat lightning, the unseasonable cold snap be damned.

Jonah’s mother never took kindly to these occurrences. Jonah’s mother never took kindly to anything, really. Her father’s advice came from his experience in keeping his head down to avoid her mother’s ire.

“You’ll work yourself into a tizzy if you try and figure it out,” he’d told her once, tucking her into bed after her mother had raged over something or other.

And so she didn’t. Jonah lived quite comfortably by not thinking too much about anything.

There were times though, when she could not help but think about it, could not help but think about the injustice of it, how none of the things screamed at her ever made any sense, how her ending up with a mother like hers was the most unlucky of all.

There were times where she could not help but look up as her mother raged. There were times where she was filled with anger so big and blind it scared her, reminded her of her mother.

If she were unlucky enough to make eye contact with her mother, it normally went about like waving red at a bull. But there were times where Jonah's rage broke open. Where it made her feel as if she were going blind. Those times Jonah’s nose would begin to bleed, and her mother would just stop, and turn without a word, and tuck herself into bed, no matter the hour, not bothering to wipe the blood dripping from her own nose.

Those occurrences scared Jonah the most, and so she did her best to follow her father’s advice and not think about them. Because while ignoring them was hard, thinking about them was terrifying.

There finally came an occurrence that could not be ignored. Not that Jonah wouldn’t have tried, but the multiple witnesses and broad daylight made that a bit difficult.

Jonah’s day had been going relatively well, her morning quiet and the school day uneventful in that end of the school year way. There was a cool breeze that made the walk to her little brother’s school enjoyable, rather than the typical health hazard that is Louisiana in May.

Her mother was there.

There, lined up outside the First Baptist, the only private kindergarten in Lee, Louisiana, with all the other mother’s, was Maryanne Ashford. A debutant in years past, she had never let the figure or posture go. She was chatting with the other mother’s in her thickest, sweetest accent as if she’d known them for years, as if she knew where her son went to school, as if Jonah hadn’t been the one to enroll him, and pack every lunch, and drop him off and pick him up every single day.

Mrs. Brentwood spotted her and hollered her over.

Jonah bit her tongue on where her thoughts had been headed, she was having a nice day.

“Hey, Ma,” Jonah said once she’d reached her side, kneading the straps on her book bag out of nerves until she could figure out the mood her mother was in.

“What are you doing here, sweetheart?” her mother asked, the sickly-sweet words and accent acting like a weight on Jonah’s head until her eyes were glued to the ground.

‘Sweetheart’ was never good, especially in public, but the question remained, why was her mother here.

“I – uh, I thought since the weather was so nice, I’d come pick Peter up today and we could walk home,” she lied.

The lie made no sense, of course, she picked up Peter every day – everyone there knew that. Mrs. Brentwood looked between the two in confusion.

Jonah prayed that she would, for once, get lucky and Mrs. Brentwood would just be quiet.

Her mother beat Mrs. Brentwood to it, but the words coming out of her mouth did nothing to loosen the knots Jonah’s insides were tying themselves into. “Sweets, don’t you remember, I told you at breakfast this morning that I’d be picking him up today. I swear this child, put food in front of her and it’s like she got blinders on. I’m always afraid she’ll lick the flowers off the china one day,” the last bit was said to Mrs. Brentwood, leaning in conspiratorially for a chuckle.

Ahh, Jonah realized. So that was the mood her mother was in, the one where she lies like breathing. Nothing anyone else ever says will be correct in this mood, but if she rolled with the punches it was normally tame enough.

Breakfast that morning had been scrambled eggs and jelly toast for Peter and the last banana in the bunch, which probably should have been used for banana bread the day before, for herself. She had not seen her mother that morning. And the crumbs in her pocket from where she carried Peter’s toast for him on the walk to school could attest to the fact that she had handled breakfast all on her own.

The subtle dig on her eating habits did hurt a little, even if it was a lie. Jonah had certainly not inherited her mother’s physique. She was tall and sturdy like her father, doing well in sports like softball and soccer, and looking horribly out of place in the ones like ballet that her mother signed her up for. Her dark hair was a stark contrast to her mother’s golden blonde and cut into a long bob that nearly sent her mother into a conniption when she first saw it. About all that she got from her mother were her freckles, which her mother for years had tried to get her to cover with makeup. Her mother treated the word tomboy like a curse, but it very much fit Jonah. Her mother’s subtle digs about her appearance had been a constant during her life, but, as it would any teenage girl, they still stung.

Jonah lifted her head a little, so long as she let her mother lead the conversation, she could react to whatever story she concocted accordingly, and they could go home, and it would all be fine.

The doors opened and the children filed out, backpacks larger than them and not a gapless grin among them.

An intense stab of panic struck Jonah, ‘Please, please, please, don’t let him call me momma,’ she thought. The habit had begun when Peter began talking, and she had tried to teach him otherwise because their mother did not like it, but he still sometimes slipped up when he got excited, like when greeting her after school. 

“Hi, mommy! Hi, Jonie!” Peter shouted as ran to them as fast as his little legs and large backpack allowed.

“Hey, Bugs! How was school,” Jonah asked while scooping him up into her arms.

The three began to walk towards the parking lot to load into her mother’s car, with Peter giving a minute by minute description of the adventures of his day, barely taking a second to breathe.

Jonah, relieved to have made it through the interaction unscathed and comforted by the buffer that was Peter in her arms, dared to ask, “So, why was it you needed to pick him up today?”

“I forgot what you told me this morning,” she quickly tagged on, remembering to follow her mother’s version of events.

Her mother was quiet for several steps. She fiddled with her key fob and fixed her hair in the car's reflection before facing Jonah, seemingly steeling herself before saying, in an uncharacteristically quiet voice, “The weather was nice today, so I figured I’d take him to get some flowers to bring to Granny.”

Oh. Jonah's stomach hit the pavement and she froze. It took all of Jonah’s remaining mental facilities to slowly slide Peter to stand on the ground.

“Jonah – I” her mother began, lifting her hand as if she were about to reach out.

Jonah heard it as if underwater. She could no longer hear Peter’s rambling, the breeze in the trees had stopped, the feeling of Peter wrapped around one of her legs was gone.

That look of genuine worry and pity on her mother’s face would be the last emotion she showed for her daughter. 

////////////////////

Jonah’s next thought was that her Sunday school teacher had been right, and Jonah had finally been smitten by God. Her hands were smoking as they clung to the cross on the school chapel’s roof and she was shaking more than the leaves in the trees that were now at eye level.

When her ears stopped ringing, she could hear the mix of praying and screaming coming from the mothers below.

“You need to let go,” called out a dry voice behind her.

Jonah could just crane her head and look around the edge of the cross she was clinging onto to see a hooded figure standing casually on the slant of the roof. Or was he wearing a suit, or a leather jacket, every time she blinked, which she was doing rapidly, his appearance changed, the only constant the outline of shadow around him.

“You need to let go,” he sighed out again.

His mouth hadn’t moved when he’d spoken.

Jonah clung to the cross impossibly tighter. “No thank you,” she tried, her voice cracking.

“Well how else do you plan on getting down,” he sounded bored, like peeling fifteen-year-old girls off of crosses was an everyday ordeal for him.

But Jonah realized he had a point, and so she dared to look down for the first time.

Four other people dressed in the ever-changing manner of the man on the roof were on the ground. Three were talking to groups of the mothers and children and one was standing next to her mother and Peter. Her mother was knelt down and had her hands over her ears. Whatever that version of the roof man was saying, her mother did not want to hear it.

Jonah wished she could be down there with Peter. She’d pick him up, take him home, and pretend this whole thing had never happened.

As soon as she’d begun to think this though, the world went white again and she was suddenly standing right next to her mother and brother.

Her mother, without looking up, saw her shoes suddenly appear and began to sob. Jonah was as shocked by this as by any of the day's events. She reflexively reached for Peter to pick him up, but her mother snatched him away, curling around him and continuing her wailing.

Jonah still had her arms outstretched for where Peter should have been when all five of the strange roof men appeared around them.

“Jonah Thea Ashford, Maryanne Ashford, there are things the council must discuss with you,” echoed from five voices, but not a single lip moved.

Before Jonah could string together any of her questions, a painful flash of cold surrounded her left wrist and she fell to her knees, the sound of her mother’s tears following her into the dark.


	2. Chapter 2

When Jonah rolled out of bed, the afternoon sun was casting long and low shadows across her room. She felt as if her brain had been replaced by cotton and there was a persistent metallic taste in her mouth. She stumbled to the kitchen for a glass of water. But on her way, she saw her mother sitting on the couch and two men on the armchairs opposite.

Oh. They had company. She changed her path and reached for the pitcher of tea on the table instead. But her hand missed. She looked down. The table was bare but for two empty bottles of her mother’s Jack, and a scrap of paper with her father’s emergency work number that normally lived on the fridge.

Where was the tea? Where was the tray of cookies?

Jonah shook her head, trying to clear it and looked up. There had only been one time in her life where there had been guests in her home and no tray of sweet tea and peanut butter cookies.

That was the day Granny had passed.

Her mother crying, the number on the table, the men she didn’t recognize.

She picked up the paper with shaking hands. A whimper bubbled its way out of her throat before she could stop it, causing all eyes to turn towards her.

“Where’s Daddy?” Jonah asked, fighting to keep tears at bay.

She had directed the question to her mother who made no indication she had heard it. She remained steadfastly staring at the grandfather clock on the wall in front of her, only flinching when the dishes in the cabinets began shaking like Jonah’s hands were.

“Your father is fine. He should be here shortly,” one of the men who had risen from the armchairs said. He raised his hand as if to reach out to Jonah. She felt a cold sensation around her wrist and the kitchen stopped shaking.

She looked down at her wrist and saw a thin silver band wrapped around it. From what she could see of the inside it had some engraving, and the outside had four small teal stones spaced equally around the band.

She tried to find the clasp in order to take it off and get a closer look, but the man spoke, interrupting her search. “Why don’t you come and have a seat and we can explain things,” he said.

Jonah eyed the empty space on the couch next to her mother. They didn’t share the couch on their good days, and from the way her mother still had not looked at her Jonah could tell this was not going to be a good day.

The other man made a gesture for her to sit, and Jonah found herself taking begrudging steps forward before she could decide for herself.

When Jonah reached the edge of the couch, her proximity seemed to stir her mother from the stupor she was in. She jumped up from the couch and immediately headed for the door, weaving between Jonah and the coffee table like both were on fire. She had her keys in hand and was halfway out the door before Jonah could react.

“Wait!” Jonah shouted, lunging for the door before it could slam. “Ma, what’s going on? Where are you going? Please, Ma!”

Her mother did not pause her efforts to leave.

“Ma, please don’t leave. Where’s Daddy?” Jonah begged, tears beginning to fall.

“Please, Momma! Where’s Peter? Momma, please don’t go,” she said, having finally managed to get her foot in the door.

“Momma, where’s Peter you have to tell me! Please,” she cried, her voice breaking. She was shouting now and was sure the neighbors could hear, but for once she could not care about the number one rule of do not cause a scene.

“He’s at your grandmother’s, goddammit,” she hissed. “Your Daddy will be here soon so just let me go,” she said, trying to pry Jonah’s foot from the crack in the door.

“But – “ Jonah began. Her father worked on an oil rig, it took him days to get home.

“You’ve been asleep for two days, now would you just get away already,” her mother said, anticipating her question. 

The shock and her mother's persistence finally moved Jonah from the door.

Jonah leaned against the wall. She’d been asleep for two days.

She heard her mother’s car door slam.

She flung the door open and all but fell onto the porch. “Mommy, wait,” she sobbed.

But her mother was already pealing down the drive, not looking back.

Jonah stayed on the front porch, crying in that body wracking way that only small children do. Wailing for her mother, her father, her granny, her brother, anyone.

///////////////////////

The sun had just set when her father’s truck came lumbering up the drive. At the sight of Jonah on the porch, he jumped out, not bothering to cut the engine.

“Jonah, darling! What is it? What’s wrong?” he asked, his hands fluttering over her anxiously.

Before Jonah could whimper out a snotty, ‘Mommy left me’, the door opened and there stood the man from before.

Jonah had completely forgotten about the men inside in her outburst.

Her father’s arms, which had begun gathering Jonah up, tensed, and she could feel the, ‘Who the hell are you’ he was about to say.

The man at the door raised his hand to cut him off and said, “Thomas Ashford, there are things we need to discuss with you. Please, bring Ms. Jonah inside.”

Her father picked her up and carried her inside, over his shoulder Jonah saw his truck door close and the engine shut off on its own. She buried her face in his shoulder.

The man directed them to the couch and sat on the armchair himself. Only Jonah could hear her father grumble about being shown around in his own living room as he sat her down, making sure she was close enough he could still reach.

“Now someone had best tell me what the hell is going on here, right now,” he growled out, his deep voice and thick Louisiana accent slurring the words together.

The man that had shown them in clasped his hands together as if he was about to speak, but the other man beat him to it. 

“Your daughter is a witch,” he drawled, reclined in his chair as he had been since Jonah first woke up, more concerned by the lazy circles the ceiling fan was making it seemed, than anything else.

“I – uh, well yes,” the other man deflated, “She is.”

Father and daughter waited for more, and when none came it was Jonah that whispered, “What?”

“Now I am serious, you two need to tell me what’s going on and why you’re in my house or we’re gonna have a real problem,” her father said. 

“It’s true. Your daughter is a witch,” the first man said.

Her father began grumbling, but the man cut him off. “Now I know that this is confusing for both you,” he began, “but I assure you it is true.”

“The world as you know it has only men and magic is a thing of children’s imaginations. But there is more to this world, and magic is very real. There are some people in this world that can use this magic.”

“Do you mean witches and wizards? Like bippidy boppidy, magic spells, waving sticks around. sparkles in the air type shit? You’re telling me that’s real,” Her father said disbelievingly.

“Ah, a demonstration it seems,” the second man said, leaning forward in his chair.

“Watch this glass,” he said.

Jonah didn’t know how she had missed the glass of water on the coffee table considering the taste in her mouth from waking up had not left, but her father’s wide eyes told her perhaps she hadn’t missed it at all.

Jonah expected something. Him to wave and do some sleight of hand, cameras and people to pop out and tell her it was an elaborate joke, her to wake up from this weird dream. What she did not expect was for the glass to change to a bottle of wine.

No flashing, no hand waving, no sparkles in the air. One moment it had been a glass of water and the next a bottle of wine.

Jonah looked at her father who was rubbing his eyes. “I’m dreaming,” he croaked out, with a nervous chuckle.

Jonah thought the same but knew that they could not both be dreaming.

“Sorry, I couldn’t resist, what with me having to peel her off that cross before she burned the whole church down,” the second man said, smiling.

Jonah very nearly fainted. Her father slung his arm over her as she swayed.

“I remember,” she breathed out.

“Wonderful,” the first man said, “Now, normally, witches are born within magical families. It is very rare for a witch to be born to mortals like yourself. But it is not unheard of, because the genetics and actual nature of magic is not fully known.”

“Now, let’s slow down – “ her father began.

“Dad,” she cut him off, “please.”

Something in her face must have given him pause because he shut his eyes and gestured for the man to continue. What he saw there she didn’t know; she could not begin to put a name to all that she was feeling at that time.

The man continued his story, and the second man sat back in his chair, continuing his examination of the ceiling fan.

“For as long as time is told there has been magic in this world and people touched by it. But for as long as time has been told, there have been people without this magic that coveted it. Mortals that wanted the power that witches are granted at birth have done horrible things to get it. It is for this reason that witches chose to withdraw from the world of mortal men.

A group of survivors from different covens came together in what would eventually become known as the Council. This merging of different covens was the first of its kind, and through their unity and compromise, they were able to lead the rest of witchkind out of the years of persecution.

They made places just for themselves, hidden by magic and protected from mortals, where they could be safe and practice magic freely. These safe havens eventually came to be schools. Witch children would be sent to live there, a place where they could grow and learn about their magic without persecution, from all around.

And it is to one of these schools that your mother has agreed to send you to.”

Jonah was still trying to digest all that had been said, but her father already questioning the men.

“Her mother agreed to what now? I have a say too! Where is this school,” he demanded. 

“Bolingbroke Academy is located in New York City. It is a world-class school for young witches and is the current research seat of the Council,” the man said.

“New York,” her father parroted, “that’s really far.”

“I assure you, Mr. Ashford, it is the best place for her. Jonah needs to learn to control her magic,” he explained.

“Why,” Jonah spoke up for the first time. Why must she go to this school and learn magic, she thought. Why could she not just continue living as she had been? She would rather things not change than be shipped off to New York for a life of water to wine party trick miracles.

“So that you don’t blow yourself, and whatever unlucky sap pissed you off, up,” the second man said, still not bothering to look down from the ceiling fan. “You’re going to use magic whether you want to or not, it’s not something you can tamp down. So, unless you go to school and learn how to control it, nearly burning down your brother’s kindergarten won’t be the worst thing you do.”

Her father’s eyes were as big as saucers as he looked back and forth between Jonah and the man.

“What,” he squeaked, “does he mean you nearly burned down your brother’s school?”

“Dad,” Jonah sighed. She did not like the way her father was looking at her. She began to pick at her lap, a flush burning her cheeks and tears stinging her eyes.

“It is true that young witches sometimes have magical outbursts,” the first man said, looking very much like he wished the other would keep quiet, “All children have outbursts, of course. But when that child has power, it can be a bit more traumatic than your typical tantrum.”

“That bracelet you are now wearing is a way of preventing that, it siphons off the excess magic that builds up whenever you get too emotional, preventing uncontrolled magical spillage. All magical children are given one at birth, often passed down as family heirlooms, and they wear it till they graduate,” he continued.

“Most of the arrangement’s for Jonah’s enrollment at the Academy have already been taken care of by your wife sir, but we are here to address any concerns you may still have,”

There were several minutes where her father simply sat there, rubbing his hands on his worn jeans.

Finally, he said quietly to his lap, “I don’t believe it. I don’t wanna believe it. A man comes into my house and starts talking about magic voodoo and witches I’d have the law and a straightjacket here in a heartbeat.”

He looked up at Jonah, “Why do I believe them?” He asked it like he was looking for absolution.


	3. Chapter 3

The evening was spent in that half tearful half giddy way that all of her father’s first days back are - the two glued at the hip as they unpack his bags and make fried squash blossoms and try to catch up on months of each other’s lives in hours.

But there was still no tea and cookies on the table. Her mother never came home. And there was no Peter weaving underfoot and squealing when he was snatched up into the air.

Every bag of her father’s that was emptied, was then packed with Jonah’s own things. 

Where there should have been raucous talk of her father’s less scrupulous coworkers, there where tense standoffs where her father tried to shove her only warm jacket into the bag. 

“Dad I don’t – “ she began. 

“It gets cold in New York. You have to take it. I don’t – “ his knuckles whitened around the jacket. “I don’t know when you’re coming back home, to get it.” 

One of the men, that she was sure had excused themselves onto the porch, stepped from the shadow in the corner of her room. “I assure you, Mr. Ashford, Jonah can return home if necessary. Students return home for all the normal school holidays you’re used to. And parents may visit anytime.” 

Jonah had to tamp down an incredulous noise in her throat. She wasn’t sure if it was to be a laugh or a scream. She felt like doing both anytime the men ‘assured’ them of anything. How was a man that melted from shadows meant to be reassuring, Jonah wondered? 

The packing continued, with tense moments of misty eyes turned away from one another and the man melting in with more platitudes. 

After managing to shove her jacket and a number of his work flannels Jonah pretended she hadn’t seen into the worn suitcase, her father clasped his hands. Looking around for what else needed to be packed. 

Jonah let him look. She would rather not. The room was by no means empty, but there were enough bare spots that staring at her rug was suddenly crucial to getting the lump in her throat down. 

“Do you – “ she saw her father’s fingers trail along the trunk at the foot of her bed, “I’ll keep it for you. Keep it for when you come home,” he said quietly. 

She nodded slowly. Her rug had never been this interesting.

////////

Jonah didn’t sleep that night. She lay upside down on her bed on the spare sheets – her own tightly packed away – as she had on every night of big change in her life. Before each birthday, each new year, holiday, end of school, start of school, she would lay with her head at the foot of her bed and try to get any sleep. Her anxiety and restlessness morphed into a quirky tradition when asked about it by her father. Something about a new perspective for a new start, she’d told him the night before her first year of high school began. 

She spent the night terrified to look, but she knows that where her father lay on the floor beside her bed, head at the wrong end just like her, he had not slept a wink either. 

The two had coffee together in silence the next morning. Jonah’s mother did not like it when she drank coffee. 

Their porch goodbyes were as long and drawn out as a southern goodbye should be, with everything Jonah said muffled by her father’s arms. 

“It’ll only be a few weeks, Dad. I’ll come home before term starts, I just have to go take a bunch of placement tests and memorize a crash course in all magic,” she tried to joke. 

“It’s not your fault. You’re a late bloomer, you get it from me,” he tried to return as well. The shaky voice and tightening arms undermining his attempted levity. 

“You’d better come home to me, do you hear me,” he grumbled. 

Had the knit on his shirt always been this fascinating? 

///////////

The ride to the airport was the strangest of Jonah’s life. She sat clutching her seatbelt in the backseat watching as the two men she still couldn’t tell apart drove down her familiar back roads and towards the city in a Towncar that had appeared in her driveway that morning. 

“Do witches even know how to drive?” she blurted out at one point, unnerved by the normalcy of the drive from the very abnormal men. 

“I don’t know how to drive. Do you?” asked the one in the driver's seat, lolling his head back to look at her in the rearview. 

“Witches can drive, yes. There are modes of magical transport that many prefer, but witches are all capable of driving,” the other man said, “In modern times, most witches don’t live all that differently than mortals.”

Not all that different. Jonah felt the same incredulous noise building in her throat again. She decided to just focus on not thinking about it and not wearing a hole through the seat belt. 

When they finally reached the airport, a handful of papers was shoved in one hand and the handle of all her bags into the other. 

“Alright so there’s an hour until your flight it seems, you should head – “ the man began. 

“Wait, where are you guys going?” Jonah asked. 

The second man had begun to walk back towards the car. 

“You can’t just leave me here! I’ve never even been to an airport before!” she exclaimed. 

“I have to go to the library. Don’t worry, we’ll meet you there,” he called out over his shoulder, beginning to jog to catch up to the other man before he could drive away and leave them both. 

For a minute Jonah stood there once she had been left alone. The tickle finally escaped her throat. One croaked chuckle turned into a full-blown fit of manic, gasping laughter. The edges of her vision were beginning to turn a faint white, and she was sure her wrist would be burned from the cold of her bracelet, but she could not stop. 

She was waiting for the dream or psychosis to dissolve around her now that she was alone with no plan of where to go, for reality to begin picking holes in whatever this demented fantasy was. 

When this vision continued and she did not wake up, Jonah leaned back onto her old standby: don’t think too hard about it, just go with it. 

So, she took a deep breath, screwed her eyes shut, and then blinked them open to face whatever may be. 

Only to come to the realization, that she had no idea what to do. She’d never flown on a plane before; she didn’t even know if she had a ticket. 

She quickly flipped through the papers that had been shoved into her hand looking for a ticket. The pages were all blank. 

She was standing, still ruffling through the papers and debating opening her bags to see if she could find anything resembling a ticket when a woman wearing an airline uniform that Jonah couldn’t place if dared approached her. 

“Do you need any help miss?” she asked. 

“Um – I uh, I don’t really know where I’m supposed to go,” Jonah admitted. 

Jonah handed over the blank pages when prompted, and the woman nodded as she flipped through them, seemingly reading. 

“Well Miss, I can get you all checked in if you just follow me,” the woman said, turning to go. 

Jonah had no idea what the woman had gleaned from the pages or where she was being led, but she hastened to gather up all her bags and follow. 

She nearly threw her bags into the air in her hoisting them up. They were significantly lighter than they had been when she’d loaded them into the car that morning. 

Perhaps this one bit of magic wasn’t so bad. 

And perhaps whatever charm was on the papers that had every airport worker and even the cab driver immediately taking her to wherever it was she needed to go. 

Or perhaps not, Jonah thought, as the cabbie ushered a confused Jonah out onto the curb in front of a half caved-in cathedral in a line of dilapidated buildings. If it hadn't been a crumbling shell, Jonah could easily picture this once grand cathedral being a school for magic. It's old stone and ornate spires - only one was still standing - did seem like the castles that housed wizards and knights that she read as a child. But the ratted out convenience store next door was a contrast that brought her back to the present. 

“Sir, I really don’t think this is right,” she said, squinting at the papers trying to see what had made him take her here of all places. “Are you sure?” she turned to ask, but he was already driving away. 

The street was empty – not what she imagined when she pictured New York City - there was no one she could ask for help. 

So as to not get more lost, she resolved to wait for someone to come along who she could show her blank pages to for aid. 

She had been sitting on one of her suitcases for just long enough that she began to wonder if the busted storefront across the street would have a working bathroom when three girls around her age turned the corner and stumbled onto the block, tripping over themselves laughing. 

Jonah got to her feet, ready to ask them for help, but they pulled up short at the sight of her. 

The three were dressed in stereotypical school uniforms that Jonah would have imagined for a place called Bolingbroke Academy, navy sweaters tied around waists, collared shirts untucked, black pleated skirts, school insignia askew on their bows. And all three carried bags of movie theater popcorn like it was contraband. 

Two were very obviously identical sisters, a half an inch the only thing differentiating the two. It was the third, taller friend, who asked, “Are you lost?” when they got within earshot. 

“Yes?” Jonah asked, many questions packed into that one answer. 

“Where are you trying to get to?” one of the twins asked. 

“Um – there,” she pointed at the insignia on their shirts, “I think.”

At their tilted heads, she tried to explain further, “I go there now, uh, I think.” 

“I’m new. I was supposed to come and take a bunch of placement tests but I don’t know where to go,” she rambled. 

“Oh, if you’re looking for the door it is over here,” the other twin said nonchalantly, beginning to walk through the debilitated lot of the church, tucking under a crumbling arch that must have once been a doorway. 

Jonah followed as she had been doing all day, sparing a thought for if chiggers were a problem this far north as she too crossed the overgrown lot. 

That thought fizzled out when Jonah’s feet left the cracked pavement and crossed onto polished marble in one step. 

She left her jaw on the ornate marble as she tried to take in her surroundings. Beyond the crumbling doorway, the room opened up into a gleaming, impossibly large round room. Great stone pillars lined the walls, disappearing up into a glass ceiling illuminating the room with cheery weather that did not match what she had just been sitting in. Archways leading off to the unknown were wrapped around the room between the pillars, several stories high, with people dressed like the three girls darting between them. 

“Welcome to Bolingbroke,” the third girl said. 

“You can have a tour later,” came a voice from behind them. 

One of the men from before had been leaned against a pillar to the right of the door. “Girls,” he said, “Your commencement dinner is soon.” 

The girls quickly fled with mumbled apologies and popcorn bags hidden poorly under sweaters. 

Jonah wanted to lay into him about him abandoning her at the airport, but she wasn’t sure if it had been him that did so. She couldn’t recall what those men had looked like, and she couldn’t tell what this man looked like now.

“We have work to do,” he said, interrupting her thoughts. He tossed her a paper airplane that had suddenly appeared in his hand. 

She caught it and unfolded it. It was a boarding pass for a flight to New Orleans, and the other side was for New York, and the other side was a map of what she thought was Ohio, and the other side looked like a birth certificate before it was snatched back from her hand which was cold from her bracelet.

“Step one,” he said, beginning to walk into one of the identical archways, “get you a wand so you don’t kill us all.” 

Jonah hastened to follow, still lugging her thankfully light bags, “What’s step two?” she asked. 

“Figure out what the hell to do with you,” he said. 


End file.
